THE NEW GOVERNESS
None of the little household at Mallory Grange, Lord St. Maurice"s Norfolk seat, ever forgot Margharita"s first appearance among them. She came late in the afternoon, and was shown into Lady St. Maurice"s own little sitting room, without the ceremony of an announcement. Lady St.
Maurice had many kind words ready to say, but the sight of the figure who crossed the threshold, and came out of the dusk toward the center of the room, struck her dumb. She stood up for a moment perfectly silent, with her hand pressed to her side. Such a likeness was marvelous. In this girl"s proud, dark face she could recall Leonardo"s features one by one. The air seemed suddenly full of voices, sobbing and cursing and threatening. Then she came to herself, and held out her hand--forced her lips even to wear a kindly welcoming smile.
"I am so glad to have you here, Margharita," she said. "Do you know that your likeness to your mother--and her family--has startled me. It is wonderful."
"It is very nice to hear you say so," the girl answered, taking the chair which, at Lady St. Maurice"s motion, a servant had wheeled up to the fire. "I like to think of myself as belonging altogether to my mother and her people. I have been very unhappy with my father"s relations."
"I am only sorry that you remained with them so long," Lady St. Maurice said. "Let me give you some tea, and then you must tell me why you never wrote to me before."
"Because I made up my mind to bear it as long as I was able," she answered. "I have done so. It was impossible for me to remain there any longer, and I determined to take my life into my own hands, and, if necessary, find a situation. I wrote first to you, and you have been kind enough to engage me."
To Lady St. Maurice, who was a woman of genial manners and kindly disposition, there seemed to be a curious hardness in the girl"s tone and mode of expressing herself. She had avoided the kiss with which she had been prepared to greet her, and had shaken hands in the most matter-of-fact way. This last phrase, too, was a little ungracious.
"Engage you! I hope you are not going to look upon our little arrangement in that light," Lady St. Maurice said pleasantly. "For your mother"s sake, Margharita, I should have been only too glad to have welcomed you here at any time as my daughter, and I hope that when we know one another better, you will not be quite so independent. Don"t be afraid," she added, "you shall have your own way at first. Some day I hope that you will come round to mine."
Margharita sipped her tea quietly, and made no reply; but in the firelight her dark eyes glowed softly and brightly, and Lady St. Maurice was quite satisfied with her silence. For a few moments neither of them spoke. Then Lady St. Maurice leaned back in her chair, away from the firelight, and asked a question.
"Did you know that the Count di Marioni, your uncle, was in London?"
"I knew that he had been there," Margharita answered in a low tone.
"Had been! Has he gone away?"
"I suppose so," the girl continued, looking steadily at her questioner.
"Yesterday I called to see him at a hotel in Piccadilly, and they told me that he had left that morning for abroad. I was sorry to be too late."
"Yes."
Lady St. Maurice asked no more. The dark eyes seemed to be trying to pierce the dusk between them, and read her face. She turned the conversation, and asked a few questions about the journey. Afterward would be time enough to find out how much this girl knew.
Soon Lord St. Maurice came in from shooting, wet to the skin, and stood by the fire, drinking his tea and talking pleasantly to Margharita and his wife. She talked more readily to him than to Lady St. Maurice, but in the middle of the conversation she checked herself and stood up.
"I am tired," she said abruptly. "May I go to my room?"
Lady St. Maurice took her away herself, and showed her the suite which had been prepared for her. There was a bedroom, a daintily furnished little sitting room, and a bath room, all looking out upon the sea. A bright fire had been lit in both the rooms, and bowls of flowers and many little feminine trifles helped to unite comfort to undoubted luxury. Margharita went from one to the other without remark.
"These are far too nice," she said simply, when Lady St. Maurice turned to go. "I have not been used to such luxury."
Lady St. Maurice left her with a sigh, and went downstairs. She had hoped to see the cold proud face relax a little at the many signs of thought in the preparations which had been made for her, and she was disappointed. She entered her sitting room thoughtfully, and went up to her husband.
"Geoffrey, she is horribly like him."
"If poor Marioni had had this girl"s looks I should have felt more jealous," he answered lightly. "I"m almost sorry Lumley is here."
She shook her head.
"She is beautiful, but I don"t think Lumley will admire her. He places expression before everything, and this girl has none. She must have been very unhappy, I think, or else she is very heartless!"
He stood with his back to the fire, twisting his mustache and warming himself.
"The fact is," he remarked, "you"re disappointed because she didn"t jump into your arms and cry a little, and all that sort of thing. Now, I respect the girl for it; for I think she was acting under constraint.
Give her time, Adrienne, and I think you"ll find her sympathetic enough.
And as to the expression--well, I may be mistaken, but I should say that she had a sweeter one than most women, although we haven"t seen it yet.
Give her time, Adrienne. Don"t hurry her."
It was two hours before they saw her again, and then she came into the drawing room just as the dinner gong was going. Neither of them had seen her save by the dim light of a single lamp, and even then she had been wrapped in a long traveling coat; and so, although Lord St. Maurice had called her beautiful, they were neither of them prepared to see her quite as she was. She wore a plain black net dinner gown, curving only slightly downward at the white throat, the somberness of which was partially relieved by an amber foundation. She had no jewelry of any sort, nor any flowers, and she carried only a tiny lace handkerchief in her left hand. But she had no need of a toilet or of adornment. That proud, exquisitely graceful carriage, which only race can give, was the dowry of her descent from one of the ancient families of Southern Europe; but the beauty of her face was nature"s gift alone. It was beauty of the best and purest French type--the beauty of the aristocrats of the court of Louis the Fourteenth. The luxurious black hair was parted in the middle, and raised slightly over the temples, showing a high but delicately arched forehead. Her complexion was dazzling in its purity, but colorless. There was none of the harshness of the Sicilian type in her features, or in the lines of her figure. The severest critic of feminine beauty could have asked only for a slightly relaxed mouth, and a touch of humanity in her dark, still eyes; and even he, knowing that the great joys of womanhood--the joys of loving and being loved--were as yet untasted by her, would have held his peace, murmuring, perhaps, that the days of miracles were not yet pa.s.sed, and a daughter of Diana had appeared upon the earth.
The little group, to whom her entrance was something like a thunderbolt, consisted only of Lord and Lady St. Maurice, and their son, Lord Lumley.
He, although his surprise was the greatest, was the first to recover from it.
"I am happy to meet you in proper form, Miss Briscoe," he said, bowing, and then looking into her face with a humorous light in his eyes. "I was afraid that I should never have the opportunity of telling you that those fellows met with, at any rate, a part of what they deserved. I saw them locked up."
She looked at him for a moment with slightly arched eyebrows, and then suddenly smiled.
"Oh! is it really you?" she exclaimed, holding out her hand, which she had not previously offered. "I am so glad. I was afraid that I should never have the opportunity to thank you for your kindness."
"You have met Lumley before, then?" asked Lady St. Maurice, wondering.
"Scarcely so much as that," he answered, laughing. "Don"t you remember my telling you of my adventure in Piccadilly, mother?"
"Yes, I remember. Do you mean that the young lady was really Margharita?"
She looked at him, and he colored slightly. For the first time he remembered how enthusiastically he had spoken of the girl whom he had a.s.sisted, and Lady St. Maurice remembered, too, that for several days afterward he had been silent and distrait. She could not fail to remember it, for it was the first time she had ever heard Lumley admire a girl in such terms.
"Yes, it was Miss Briscoe," he answered, keeping his head turned away from his mother.
"It was indeed I," she admitted. "I don"t know what I should have done, but for your help, Lord Lumley. I am afraid that I should have screamed and made a scene."
"I can"t imagine your doing it!" he remarked truthfully.
"Perhaps not! But I was so surprised, I could not understand it."
"May I remind you that I am completely in the dark as to this little adventure," Lord St. Maurice remarked pleasantly. "What was it, Lumley?"
"A very simple affair after all. I was in Piccadilly, and Miss Briscoe here was coming out of some milliner"s shop and crossing the pavement to her carriage."
"Cab!" she interrupted.
"Cab, then. Well, it was late in the afternoon, and two drunken little cads tried to speak to her. Naturally, as I was the nearest decent person, I interfered and a.s.sisted Miss Briscoe into her cab. That I was pa.s.sing was a piece of good fortune for which I have always been thankful."
"Lord Lumley does not add that his interference consisted in knocking one man down and holding the other until he almost choked with one hand, while he helped me into the cab with the other."
"I only shook him a little," he laughed, giving his mother his arm, for the butler had announced dinner while they had been talking. "If I had been he I would rather have had the shaking than the look Miss Briscoe flashed at him."
"I detest being touched," she said coldly, "especially by a stranger."